The rebirth of LawRex came about almost by way of a bet. One night a technologist, Joe – a silicon valley type with an engineering degree and 15 plus years experience in website development, programming and business – found himself in the midst of a discussion with a couple of his lawyer friends; one of whom was his sister, Isis – an in house attorney with almost ten years of legal experience. The lawyers in the room were complaining (as lawyers often do) about how difficult it was to find new clients. After some debate, they all agreed that while the best way to cultivate new clients was through personal referrals, but those tended to be few and far between. To make matters worse, often referrals fell outside of their practice areas or jurisdictions and were therefore useless to them. Joe, hearing all of this, suggested that there must be an online forum where lawyers could trade referrals with each other. The lawyers sort of looked at each other and Joe a bit stunned. A lawyer-to-lawyer referral exchange service certainly made sense, but they had never heard of such a thing. Surprised that no one knew of one, Joe insisted jokingly that if it didn’t exist, he’d build it himself.

At that point Joe and Isis were on a mission to find this tool that seemed so obvious and simple; it had to exist. After days of googling they finally came across LawRex – a website created for referral exchanges between lawyers. Joe was vindicated. It was exactly what they were searching for; but when Isis tried to sign up for the service, nothing happened. She waited for a week without a response. Finally, Joe decided to contact the owner of LawRex directly. Joe found that the little known site had only been functional for a very brief time and had now been inactive for years. Further, the owner had little intention of resurrecting the site any time soon. Joe and Isis discussed it and concluded that the service was not only logical, but also necessary in these economic times. They decided to purchase the site from the prior owner, rebuild and re-launch it. Between the two of them – a seasoned techie and an experienced attorney - they discovered that they had the opportunity to rewrite the way lawyers do business.